


Everything Is Beautiful Here; It's Spinning Circles Around My Ears

by aprilwitching



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, apologies if it's less fun to read, the kind of YA romance i would have been interested in reading as a teen, this was very fun for me to write
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-28
Updated: 2016-07-28
Packaged: 2018-07-27 09:40:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7613128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aprilwitching/pseuds/aprilwitching
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two friends run away together after one of the girls' parents threaten her with involuntary institutionalization.</p>
<p>It's sweeter and weirder than it sounds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything Is Beautiful Here; It's Spinning Circles Around My Ears

 

**When They Ran Away:**

 

Pree only brought one extra pair of underwear, one extra pair of socks. She brought a box of bleach, an electric razor, and scissors. She brought half a case of room-temperature cola. She forgot to bring the case for her glasses, and while she brought a toothbrush, she forgot to bring toothpaste.She brought the money she’d been saving for college, and some she’d stolen from her mother’s secret stash while her mother was passed out drunk after work. She forgot to bring tampons.

“I was in a hurry,” she told Naomi, when she pulled into Naomi’s parents’ driveway at two in the morning. “And changing the plates on the car took some doing, you know?”

“I bet,” said Naomi, climbing into the passenger-side seat of Pree’s beat-up sedan. Her legs ran into an obstruction. “Wow, Pree, did you bring _all_ your books? See, this is why I was always telling you to get an e-reader.”

“Whatever,” said Pree, who had not brought _all_ the books she owned, but only twenty-five or so favorites. Mostly very old paperbacks. She liked the way they smelled, the crackly feeling of the pages, and the way the ink rubbed off on her fingers sometimes. A machine just wouldn’t be the same, in Pree’s opinion. Besides, she didn’t think she could ever have afforded an e-reader, even if she’d ever been the least bit tempted to buy one. “You can read any of ‘em, if you brought a flashlight. You can drink the cola in back if you want. You can drink the stuff under the seat, too, but not a lot, and you have to promise to sober up by the time it’s your turn to drive.”

“When’s it my turn to drive?” asked Naomi.

“Hopefully not for a long time,” said Pree. “I’m not made of stone, though. I get _tired_ , babe.”

“I don’t have a driver’s license,” Naomi pointed out.

“Yeah, but you can _drive_ ,” said Pree. “You’re okay as long as it’s daylight and you don’t have to make any three-point turns or parallel park, right? I won’t make you do it if you don’t wanna, but driving without a license is, like, small potatoes compared to the _other_ illegal shit we’re doing here.”

“That’s true,” said Naomi. She bent to investigate the space under her seat. “Oh! Pree! Wow!”

“I know, right? Half a bottle of some kind of fancy whiskey,” said Pree. “Haven’t tried it, but it looks pretty sweet. My cousin Jerry gave it to me when I went and told him what I was gonna do.”

“Rescue mission?” asked Naomi, amused. “Spiriting away a damsel in distress?” Naomi was confident that Pree was blushing, even though she could no longer see the other girl’s face. The lights inside the car were out, except for Naomi’s tiny keychain flashlight. They drove quickly and quietly down dark suburban streets. Naomi opened the bottle of whiskey and took a tentative sip. It burned inside her mouth, but the taste was oddly syrupy and sweet, like maple and honey. She decided she liked that combination: sugar and scalding. She took a longer pull, kept it in her mouth for as long as she could stand it, then swallowed. The alcohol tumbled down her throat like a stinging waterfall. She coughed.

“I mean,” Pree was saying, “he won’t _tell_ anybody. And _I_ didn’t tell anyone else. I just needed help with the plates, right, and Jerry, well, I knew he had done that type of thing before, and I knew I could trust--”

“I know,” said Naomi, leaning her head against the cool smoothness of the car window. “I met your cousin, remember?”

“I don’t think you met Jerry. You met Ellis, that one time. And Leroy, and maybe Jeff. Different cousins.”

“Nonetheless, I trust your judgment.”

“Oh man, now I _know_ you’re insane.”

Naomi smiled into the darkness and the windowpane. “Your whiskey tastes like summer,” she told Pree.

“Well, then I can’t wait to try some.” Pree ran a stop sign at maybe twice the speed limit, but there was no one around to see, or care. Naomi took one more quick sip of the whiskey, and then she carefully screwed the cap back on the bottle and returned it to its place under the seat.

And then they got the hell out of town.

 

 

**Rituals Of Security:**

 

They stopped at a cheap, dilapidated motel in the middle of nowhere after a day and a half of almost non-stop driving. They’d tried to sleep in shifts, each napping while the other took the wheel, but they were both too nervous and jittery to get much rest at all. Pree paid for a room in cash. She gave the elderly, bored-looking desk clerk two fake names, although he hadn’t asked for their names at all.

“This is the type of place where people get serial murdered by chainsaw wielding men in scary masks,” said Naomi, fidgeting where she sat on the edge of their room’s dingy bathtub.

“Don’t say shit like that! I’m on edge enough as it is,” said Pree, shuddering.

“I can’t believe a person like _you_ doesn’t enjoy horror movies.”

“I can’t believe a person like you _does_ enjoy horror movies. We’re both just full of surprises and hidden depths, right?”

“Hey, Pree? Maybe we should hold off on this haircutting business until we’ve both gotten some sleep.” Naomi said so for her own sake as much as her friend’s. Her eyes felt sticky, their lids heavy. There was a buzzing feeling throughout her body, as though her blood was full of tiny insects.

“No, I’m fine. I’ve cut hair a million times before. Come on; I’ll be a lot more at ease if we just get this over with.” Pree’s eyes were huge and exhausted, ringed with bruised-looking shadows behind her glasses, but her hands seemed steady on the scissors.

“All right,” said Naomi, “but you do it to _yourself_ , first.”

While Pree hacked away at her own long mousy tangles, Naomi took her special crystal out of her shorts’ cargo pocket. It was mostly clear, with a cloudy grayish flaw near its narrower end. Some kind of quartz, she assumed, though it didn’t matter; the crystal’s healing properties had nothing to do with the type of stone it was. Naomi wasn’t some New Age hippie; she could as easily have used a piece of smooth, polished glass or a small mirror as her meditation object. She liked the _naturalness_ of the crystal, though. She liked to think about its long history underground, created only by a happy accident of geology, intended for no human use or purpose. It made her feel insignificant and incidental to the world in a peculiarly reassuring way.

Naomi used the crystal to beam murky rainbows through the hotel bathroom. She focused on following those patterns of light, directing them with the crystal’s movement. She did the breathing exercise her most recent doctor had taught her. The crawling, buzzing sensation inside her began to subside.

“You okay?” asked Pree, with a sidelong glance. “Your meds aren’t wearing off already, are they?”

Naomi shook her head. “They shouldn’t completely leave my bloodstream for, like, three days or something. Anyway, I’ve got this under control. I really do.” She used the crystal to spangle Pree’s dirty T-shirt with tiny, ghostly spots of glittering color.

“I believe you,” Pree assured her. She had hacked her hair into a slightly lopsided bob, and was now ripping open the drugstore home-bleaching kit she’d brought. “It’s too bad we can’t dye yours, too.”

“Chemical sensitivity,” sighed Naomi. “You know I can’t help it.”

“At least you’re not a carrot top or anything. A quarter of the country probably has about your shade of brown hair. It’s not super distinctive. I mean, not that it isn’t _pretty_ \--”

“I’d ask you to shave my head, but I suppose that _would_ be distinctive.”

“Damn straight. I’ll razor it in the back, though.”

Naomi closed her eyes and rolled her crystal around in her hands, taking comfort in its smooth planes and occasional rough edges, the distinct crisp pressure of its pointed, pyramidal tip.

“I’d like that,” she said, and willed herself to be still and calm. She heard the soft swish of Pree moving towards her across the tile floor. She felt her hair being lifted away from her face, heard the scissors beginning their work, and thought about nothing but prisms and falling ribbons of long hair and the occasional sensation of metal or Pree’s hands brushing against her bare flesh.

 

 

**A State Of Perpetual Departure:**

 

They left the motel as soon as they’d gotten about eight hours of sleep in the strange-smelling, hard-mattressed double bed. The motel guy either wasn’t suspicious of them or didn’t give a rat’s ass, and without the internet-- which both girls were scrupulously avoiding-- they saw no signs that they were being pursued, or searched for, or even missed.

“But there’s absolutely no way your parents haven’t put out some kind of warrant,” said Pree, starting the car. “I bet people are freaking out all over Facebook right now.” Her new hair puffed out around her face like a dandelion clock, and, with her glasses, it gave her a sort of cartoon mad scientist look. Naomi told her so.

“Well, _you_ look like a twelve-year-old boy.”

“Thanks. You’re right. It’s a good thing, actually. They’re going to be looking for a seventeen-year-old girl.”

“A seventeen-year-old girl with a _dangerous mind_. Careful, officers. Her gray matter is registered as a weapon of mass destruction. Worse, she does _not_ know how to use it.”

“Ha. Ha. Ha. Our situation is hilarious,” Naomi said drily. She rolled her crystal between the palms of her hands and bit her lower lip. The surface of her skin felt like it was humming. She could sense the slightest beginnings of a migraine right around her left temple. _Calm_ , she admonished herself.

They kept driving for a long time.

They drove through cities and towns and places that used to be towns but were now only buildings, brick and wood husks sliding elegantly into dust, decay, and plant life. They drove past green fields of corn and cluttered, sprawling masses of gray and neon-- fast food places, billboards, hotels and motels, bars, shopping malls. They drove from hills and forests to plains and prairie.

“What will we do,” asked Naomi, “when we run out of money?”

Pree took a sip from the bottle of honey whiskey. There was hardly any left. “What will we do when we run out of booze?” she said, handing the bottle to Naomi. They were parked for a long rest in the enormous parking lot of a church that looked more like a big box store. It seemed safe enough. The latecoming summer dusk had finally begun to fall, and the air was lavender and humid. Naomi finished the whiskey while she watched granular, swirling patterns form and disperse in that air, the part of the air between her face and Pree’s.

“Well, it’s gone now,” Naomi said, putting the empty bottle on the car floor by her feet, “and yet, we continue.”

Pree grinned. “Right on. Hey, maybe when the money runs out, we can start robbing banks. Bonnie and Clyde-style. I drive, you blast the coppers out the shotgun window with your magic brain.” She snickered, and tried to give Naomi an affectionate punch in the shoulder.

Naomi glared at her. Pree’s glasses slid abruptly off her nose, and would have fallen to the ground had she not caught them in time. She pushed them back into place, no longer smiling or laughing.

“God. I’m sorry,” she said, looking into Naomi’s eyes. In a novel, Pree thought, she would see some incipient darkness massing like stormclouds in the depths of eyes like Naomi’s at moments like this, something dangerous flickering back there. In reality, Naomi’s eyes simply looked like eyes. They were stone gray, a little widely spaced, large, lovely. “It was a dumb joke, Naomi. You know I’d never get you in that kind of trouble. That’s the whole point of running away, right? Once you turn eighteen, they won’t be able to put you in some institution as a, a fuckin’ _preventative measure_. Not if you haven’t _done_ anything. So, we wait it out another seven months, and then we don’t have to hide anymore.”

Naomi stared gravely back at her friend. “ _Haven’t_ I done anything? Noncompliance with the medication regimen. That incident in the supermarket...”

“Dude. It is _understandable_ you always wanna go off those pills. I mean, with the side effects? They made you shit yourself in math class--”

“Thank you so much for bringing that up.”

“-- and nobody even got _hurt_ at the Food Lion. You just scared a couple people and freed a bunch of lobsters by accident. Property damage too, I guess, but nothing heinous. Regular kids pulling pranks do worse all the time, and nobody locks _them_ up in a secure facility for half a year or more because of it. It’s not _fair_ , locking people up just because they _might_ be dangerous in the future. _Everybody_ in the world _might_ be dangerous.”

“That isn’t how my parents see it. That isn’t how doctors see it. That isn’t how the government sees it. I’ll be lucky if they don’t put me away even _after_ I come of age. Who knows what the laws will be by then? Who knows if I’ll be judged competent to make my own decisions?”

“Well. That’ll be bullshit, if you’re _not_.”

“What if they arrest you for kidnapping, or something?”

Pree made a raspberry-type noise with her lips. “I don’t care if I go to jail, babe. I bet I could handle it. Give me time to re-read _Moby Dick_ , you know?”

“Oh, _Pree_.” Naomi reached over and took her hand, gently and awkwardly. Pree tensed a little, surprised, but she squeezed Naomi’s hand back.

“Serious as the grave,” said Pree, “I will have zero regrets.”

The world turned darker around them, and the sound of insects was loud.

They talked, and slept, and woke, and kept driving. They did other things, too. Sometimes they stopped for a while. But the driving would always be most of what they remembered, in the months and years to come. After a while, it felt like they had been driving forever and would continue to drive forever, that the driving was the only real part of their lives.

They drove through wastelands and around mountains. They drove on roads rushing with the jewel-like, star-like lights of other cars and the noise of engines. They drove on empty roads that stretched straight out past the horizon, flat and endless. They drove into the desert.

“Everything is beautiful out here,” said Naomi, looking around at red earth and cacti and sage. They were walking around the outside of an ancient gas station, stretching their legs in the dry heat.

“You think so?” said Pree, watching an honest-to-god tumbleweed roll past the line of gas pumps. She had half-thought those only existed in cartoons and old Westerns.

“I do! I’ve never been this far west before. I’ve never seen so much sky. So many rocks!”

“It’s all right, I guess. If something’s gonna make me feel this small, I prefer the sea.”

“We’ll get there one day, if we keep going. Wasn’t that the plan?”

“Sure, Naomi. That was the plan. As far as we’ve _got_ a plan.”

Naomi stretched her arms out wide and turned around and around in crazy circles, like a kid. Something about the air in the desert was invigorating her; she felt better than she had in days. Better than she’d felt in years, maybe. The thing inside her head was stronger, too, but it wasn’t giving her a headache or hurting her or lashing out to hurt the world. It pulsed and hummed and warmed her. It made her feel powerful, shining, like she could do anything at all with that inner fire at all. Or nothing, as she chose.

Pree watched Naomi with an unreadable expression on her face. The sunshine bounced off her glasses and gave her two blank rectangles in place of eyes.

“Pree,” said Naomi. She stopped her spinning, flushed and smiling. “Pree, I never _thanked_ you. Thanks, Pree. You gave up a _lot_ for me, and you didn’t have to do that. You didn’t have to come here. I owe you _everything_.”

Pree shrugged one shoulder, embarrassed. Her cheeks were bright pink. “Hey. No big deal. Whither thou goest,” she mumbled, “I will follow.”

Naomi stepped close to Pree. “Sorry, what did you say?”

“Never mind. I _mean_ ,” Pree continued, sounding younger and less certain than Naomi had ever heard her, “I _belong_ with you, I think. Jesus, that’s corny. But I wouldn’t...I wouldn’t wanna be anywhere else, anywhere but where you are. Not ever.”

Then she leaned over, put her hands on Naomi’s shoulders, and kissed her full on the mouth. It was clumsy, and soft, and more or less dry, but it was definitely not chaste.

Naomi kissed back for a brief moment, but then her mind caught up with the sudden turn of events. She pulled sharply away. There was a brief twinge of pain in her temples again. Behind her, a tiny whirlwind of red dirt formed and dispersed and settled back into the ground. She turned so as not to have to look at Pree’s face. Her own felt aflame. She took a long moment with her crystal, steadying herself. Pree did not speak.

“I’m certainly _flattered_ ,” Naomi finally said. Her voice sounded too distant and flat, even to her. She tried more words. “And...Pree, okay, it’s not like I didn’t _know_. No offense, but you don’t hide your crushes well at all. I need to think about some things, though. I mean, I’m not sure that I...”

“It’s fine,” said Pree. She forced out an unconvincing laugh. “Should’ve asked first, anyway.”

“Yeah. Yes, I think you really should have.”

“I don’t know what came over me. It must be desert madness. I’m sorry, Naomi. Forget it. Everything’s cool.”

“Are you sure? If you don’t want to keep going, I can probably make it on my own from here. I’m feeling great. I still have some of the money I saved.” Naomi hoped that Pree wouldn’t take her up on the offer, but it felt important to make it. She hoped Pree wasn’t going to sabotage her own life and happiness out of a misguided sense of romance. She hoped Pree didn’t think Naomi wanted her to. She hoped...what _did_ she hope? Had she disliked kissing Pree? Had she somehow used Pree’s feelings to manipulate the other girl into running away with her? Would Pree sour towards her now, having been rejected? She wasn’t sure.

“Naomi, come on! Don’t be _stupid_!” Pree half-shouted, interrupting Naomi’s worries. “I’m not gonna do that to you. You wouldn’t have a car. Or a driver’s license. Or a valid ID. Or...no, _I_ was the one being stupid. I’m in a weird mood today. Forget it.” Pree made a wiggly hand gesture in front of her face and crossed her eyes. “ _Zap_! See? Like that. Everything is forgotten.”

Naomi hesitated before responding, but not for very long.

“Everything is forgotten,” agreed Naomi. She took one more deep breath of desert air. “All right. If you’re ready to drive again, let’s hit the road.”

 

 

**One Temporary Oasis:**

 

It had been several days since they’d slept anywhere but inside the car. They tried their best to keep themselves and their clothes relatively clean, doing what they could in public restrooms, but it was a losing battle. They were grimy and disheveled and they’d begun to smell sweaty and stale. The desert heat and wind and sand weren’t helping matters much. Pree’s glasses were smudged. The skin around her eyes beneath the glasses was noticeably paler than the rest of her face. She’d taken her bra off because the grit caught inside it was bothering her, and impossible to dislodge.

“We should find another motel,” suggested Naomi. They’d been avoiding motels both out of a desire to save what money they had for food and gas, and out of caution. They’d seen no sign that they were being pursued yet, and no one ever seemed terribly suspicious of them, but neither girl expected that luck to last. Still, while they remained lucky...

“Sure,” said Pree. “Let me know when you see a cheap-looking one.”

“Will do.”

It was sunset before she did.

“Look,” she said, tapping Pree on the shoulder. They were driving fast down a wide, empty road, surrounded, it seemed, only by wild desert, telephone lines, and the occasional radio or cell tower. There wasn’t a town, or even a strip mall, for miles and miles. Yet there, in the distance, Naomi could see a long, low stucco building. A large, weather-beaten plywood sign rose above it, a novelty shaped and painted to look like a cartoon flying saucer, and she could just make out the red glow of neon letters beneath it.

“Weird,” said Pree. “Looks like a tourist trap. U.F.O museum, maybe.”

“I think that’s a Vacancy sign, though. Glowing down there.”

“Still weird,” said Pree, but she began to slow the car as they approached, looking for a parking lot or a place to pull over.

“See? It _is_ a Vacancy sign,” Naomi said, with a bit more pride than her correctness warranted. The _V_ and the _N_ were both flickering badly, and the _Y_ had entirely died, but the word was clear enough.

“Huh,” grunted Pree, as she maneuvered into the motel’s small, deserted parking lot. “There aren’t any other cars here. Are we sure they’re open for business?”

“It looks like there’s a light on inside!” Naomi scrambled out of the car the second Pree stopped it.

Taking her own sweet time, Pree stretched and yawned as she climbed out of the driver’s seat. She stood, then slammed the door harder than she needed to because she liked the sound of it, then brushed some random crud out of her straw-stiff mess of hair, then itched at an irritated dry spot on her elbow with the spine of a book she’d grabbed on her way, and finally gazed long and deep into the technicolor riot of light and clouds blazing away on the horizon. She hadn’t appreciated it while she was driving, hot and tired and locked into a kind of road trance, but it was, she had to admit, one of the most glorious things she’d seen in a while. It lit the land red and golden and pink until the rocks and sand and scrubby little plants seemed a luminous extension of that liminal sky, nothing more. It hurt something in her heart to see, but the ache was a pleasant one.

“Naomi!” she yelled. “You were right! It _is_ beautiful out here!”

But Naomi was gone.

“Damn,” said Pree. Maybe she’d been staring at the sunset like an idiot for longer than she’d thought, or maybe Naomi was still in her giddy, energetic mood from earlier. During those infrequent spells when she wasn’t lethargic from drugs and headaches, Naomi could move like a hummingbird on espresso. Pree jogged towards the door of the motel. “Naomi?!”

She was reaching for the door when Naomi pushed it open from the inside and stuck her head out, inches from Pree’s own. “Hi, Pree!”

“Aaah! _Fuck_.” Pree jumped backwards. “You’re going to give me a heart attack. So, I guess they’re in business, then?”

“Um, not quite.” Naomi frowned. “I think the building might really be abandoned, but the lights still work; the water’s still running; it’s not locked up, obviously...here, come inside and check it out.”

“Naomi. That is _truly creepy_.”

“Oh, for sure. Even creepier than the last place. Keep an eye out for the man in a mask with a chainsaw. In the meantime, they’ve got vending machines! Numbered room keys behind the front desk, too. And a swimming pool, and--” Listing the motel’s various still-functioning amenities, Naomi extended a hand to Pree, who allowed herself to be pulled, a bit dazed, through the doorway.

“You’re shitting me,” Pree said, squinting up into flickering, too-bright fluorescent lights. The lobby looked like any generic, cramped lobby in any small, shabby motel anywhere in the country, except for the fine layer of dust covering almost every surface, and the complete absence of any other human beings. Someone had, at some point, made a halfhearted attempt to decorate it in accordance with the aliens-and-spaceships theme implied by the big, nameless sign outside. There were a few faded, framed posters depicting black and white galaxies and amateurishly painted, psychedelic Martians. A rocket-shaped lava lamp sat on the check-in desk, but it had gone dark and died. Pree slid her gaze over these things without much interest. “There’s a _pool_?” she asked. “I mean, is it full? Is it covered? Could I swim in it?”

“I don’t know. I think so? It’s in this patio area at the back of the building. I only saw it through a window really quick. Why would you want to go swimming _now_?”

“Gee, I dunno. I’m hot as the Devil. I’m super itchy. The chlorine will kill whatever germs I’ve got festering in all my sweaty areas. Desert madness. Whatever. Just point me to it. If the chainsaw maniac shows up, I wanna meet him _cool_ and _damp_.” Pree smiled and winked her cheesiest wink.

“Ew.” Naomi pointed in the direction of the swimming pool. “It’s that way.”

“Awesome. Here, you can read this while I swim, if you want.” Pree shoved the book she was carrying towards Naomi.

“ _On the Road_?”

“It seemed thematically appropriate.”

“Oh. No offense, but I kind of hate Kerouac.” Naomi wrinkled her nose. “I kind of hate the Beats in general. I like novels that have actual plots. And that aren’t so gross about women.”

“‘Gross about women.’ Riiight.” Pree had already started down the hall, which boasted ugly patterned wallpaper (a garish floral print entirely unrelated to outer space, U.F.Os, or aliens) and a scratched linoleum floor. “And yet you’re a fan of that ‘co-ed killerin a hockey mask’ film franchise. Your loss, dude!” She sounded much more cheerful than she had all day.

Naomi sighed, and put the unwanted paperback on the check-in desk, next to the lava lamp. Then she headed after her friend.

 

 

**Strange Powers:**

 

Naomi had abnormally sensitive skin. She couldn’t swim in chlorinated pool water, or dye her hair, or use most makeup without breaking out in painful, itchy hives that lasted for days. She didn’t think it had anything to do with what she thought of as her “brain problem”, but it was another thing that set her apart from most people. It was another thing that made her feel like some fragile hothouse flower, that forced her to be careful and cautious when she didn’t want to be, that left her out of ordinary teenage girl activities against her will. She tried not to envy Pree for her carelessness, her toughness, her ordinariness. Her ability to choose the poisons she put in her body, and to cheerfully withstand most of them without ill effect. The way she was currently immersing herself in the electric aquamarine pool water, water Naomi thought looked toxic and smelled a little like soggy popcorn, as though it were flowing fresh and clear from a mountain spring. As though it were the sea itself.

They would get to the sea eventually, Naomi thought. They had left a town near one ocean, and eventually they would arrive at the ocean on the other side of the continent, an ocean neither girl had seen before in real life. Naomi wondered if it would look different, or smell different. She wondered if it would make her feel the way the desert made her feel, if she would still be well there, if she could remain in control. Perhaps the desert was a unique place for her, a brief, wonderful fluke.

The sky was slowly growing dark, but the pool was lit from within by lamps beneath the surface of the water. Later, Naomi was sure that Pree would want to have a long, speculative discussion on why and how an apparently abandoned motel had an unlocked front door, working electricity, and a clean, full, uncovered swimming pool. Naomi was more at ease with unexplained strangeness.

Pree had taken off her socks, boots, and jeans to swim, but left her underpants and her T-shirt on. When she dove beneath the surface of the water, the shirt billowed around her torso like a fish’s fins, or a ship’s sails. Her hair, too, swirled and drifted in a weightless, green-tinged cloud. It was an eerie, beautiful sight.

Naomi lifted Pree’s glasses from where they sat beside her at the pool’s edge. She put them on for a moment, and the world became an incomprehensible kaleidoscopic blur, like the world at the worst point of one of her headaches. She took them off again and blinked. She thought that she could live in the desert if it turned out to be necessary for her, but she’d miss Pree. She really didn’t think Pree would permanently relocate to the desert for anything, even for love. No matter what she said, Naomi thought that Pree needed rivers and seas; movement andclouds and cluttered, ever-changing landscapes filled with life. Needed them almost as much as Naomi herself needed rocks and stability; wide, open spaces and fierce light. _But_ , she thought, watching Pree dive and float and sink and rise like she was born to do it, _we’ve always been different people. That’s nothing new._

Naomi replaced Pree’s glasses on the ground-- further away from the pool now, to keep them safe in case of splashing. Naomi stood and took a few large steps backwards, too. She thought about getting her crystal out, but decided against it. She wasn’t going to need a prism this time. Naomi looked into the shimmering water, and she watched the swimming form of the girl within it move back and forth, up and down. She concentrated, and it was easy, easier than she could have dreamed; it was like extending a hand and touching whatever lay within reach.

The water rolled and shifted, and a large portion of it rose in a fountain-like column, carrying Pree into the air. Her face inside the column of water was somewhere between gleeful and panicked. Her strong legs kicked her further upwards. She made a frantic hand gesture at Naomi that seemed to indicate she needed to breathe.

Naomi left Pree levitating, but put the water back in the pool. There was only a little bit ofa splash.

Pree gasped and sputtered. “Jesus H. Christ!” she yelled. “Naomi! Did you do that on _purpose_?!”

Naomi nodded. “I’m much, much better now. I told you.”

Pree said several things then, mostly creative variations on the word “fuck”, but, to Naomi’s relief, she didn’t sound particularly angry or scared.

“I’m sorry,” said Naomi. “I wanted you to see. I’ll put you down, if you want. I promise I won’t hurt you.”

“You _surprised_ me, that’s all,” said Pree. “I always wished I could fly. My greatest childhood fantasy, besides being a pirate.”

“I know. You’ve told me that, like, a lot. Anyway, now we’re even.”

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean? ‘Even’ _how_?!” Pree already seemed at ease forty feet above the surface of the water, standing on nothing, planting her hands on her hips.

“Earlier _you_ gave me something _I_ wanted, but you gave it when I hadn’t asked for it and wasn’t expecting it and didn’t know how to react...” Naomi trailed off, uncertain how to explain herself further.

“Wha... _Oh_! Ohhhhhh. Naomi, I already said, forget about...” Pree stopped herself abruptly in mid-sentence as certain implications caught up with her. “Wait. Naomi, are you saying you, uh. Are you saying you reciprocate, um... _shit_. I mean...you know what I mean.”

“I wasn’t sure at first. Or maybe I _was_ sure, deep down, but I didn’t know if I wanted to act on it. Maybe I wanted this one thing, being friends with you, to just stay the same as it’s always been. Everything else is changing for me. I don’t have _anyone_...” Naomi paused and swallowed. She looked up at Pree, floating in the twilight, held aloft only by Naomi’s own power, but unafraid. Trusting her. “You’re the only person I have _left_. But I thought about it all day, while we were driving, and I’ve been thinking about it here, and I’ve made up my mind.” She tilted her head back, trying to make eye contact. “Yes. I reciprocate your feelings, Pree. I really do.”

Pree’s laugh was shaky, but genuine. “What a dramatic way to tell me so,” she said, catching her breath. “See, _this_ is why I love you.” She squinted down at Naomi with both determination and myopia. “I’ve been doing some thinking, too, and there’s something _I_ oughta say.”

“What’s that?”

“I didn’t run away with you because I wanted to get in your pants. That was not my motivation.”

“I never thought it _was_!”

“I know, but I’m telling you anyway. I didn’t run away with you because I wanted _anything_ from you. I didn’t even do it just because I love you, or because we’re friends, or because my own life wasn’t going so great. A _lot_ of the reason I did it was because what they were gonna do to you was _wrong_. It would be wrong to do to _anybody_. I couldn’t stand by and let that happen to a person.”

Naomi grinned. “That’s very, very noble of you.”

“I’m not necessarily saying if it’d been some random jerk from school in your position I’d have driven _them_ across the goddamn country, but believe me, I still would have tried to help whoever it was get away.”

“I am a lucky girl, then.”

“We both are.”

They stood still in silence for a moment. It wasn’t uncomfortable. The air was cooler, and the night was closer.

“Naomi? Could you put me back on the ground?” asked Pree. “I’d like to put my pants on. My glasses, too. I’m sure the view from up here would be breathtaking, if I could _see_ it.”

Naomi obliged. She handed Pree her glasses as soon as she got within reaching distance, before she’d even touched the earth.

“Smooth,” Pree commented, settling the glasses on the bridge of her nose. She landed, and took a staggering step backwards. “Whoa. Floaty legs. So, are you going to kiss me now?”

“I will! After you’ve showered, or washed your face in a sink. I don’t want to risk lip hives.”

“Lip hives!” Pree grimaced. “No, I get you.”

“Shall we go inside?”

Pree tilted her head, considering. “Actually, Naomi...if you wouldn’t mind...”

“Yeah?”

“Show me what else you can do with that water? Now that I’m able to give it a good look? This might be the last time there’s no other people around to see. It’s safe.”

“What’s really _safe_?” Naomi bounced up and down on the balls of her feet.“Well, it’s safer than elsewhere, I suppose.” She felt tired, but not that tired. She was ready to show off some more, both for Pree and for the sake of exploring her own potential, testing its limits.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want.”

“No,” agreed Naomi, “but I _do_ want.” She retrieved her crystal from her pocket, as the swimming pool was mostly behind her and she didn’t want to look away from Pree’s wonderstruck face. She rolled the crystal in her hands, feeling its familiar edges and planes, feeling a familiar electric tingling on the surface of her skin. It was no longer a dreaded sensation, or a harbinger of pain. She welcomed it, and felt the bright, restless energy begin to bloom in her mind again. She concentrated on the water behind her. “Watch this,” she said. “Let’s find out what else I can do.”

**Author's Note:**

> The character names and the title of the story come from the Neutral Milk Hotel album "On Avery Island". There is no other intentional connection between the album and this story.
> 
> As per usual, I was inspired by writing prompts on the nosebleedclub tumblr.
> 
> The abandoned but still functional/unlocked motel might seem like a twee magical realist bit, but it's pretty closely based on something that my brother claims happened to him in real life, when he was on a cross-country bike trip with some of his friends from college. :)


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